| Whatever You Want |
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When I suggest that the number of inhibitions affecting me would surprise you, you'd probably also agree that it'd be rather a waste of time to get all worked up about the extinction of the species when one has just read that one's mouth contains in excess of one billion lactic acid bacteria. Although it's undeniably true that the Internet has restored to everyday life notions such as the shopping basket, viruses (all your own fault, yah-booh) and measuring things by mega-standards, our conscience seems sadly incapable of keeping up with the scope of injustice or overcome the embarrassment of the semblance of having come out on top. It is thanks to the propitious effect of this confession that I managed to overcome my trepidation and jotted down the following. I read an article by Ms Ileen Montijn in NRC Handelsblad in late June in which she wondered in despair why there had been so little response to what constituted a gross violation of the rule of law. Dash it - had I kept my mouth shut, this is where you'd think "That's right". But as I thought "That's right" first, it's my turn. So may I ask you, in so far as you form part of the group of potential "That's right" thinkers just now, whether you have taken any actual steps? Of course you haven't, but owing to the fact that you are secretly convinced that your stance will somehow be communicated to some extent, you feel that you have most definitely contributed to whatever it is you think you have contributed to, and in a way you have done exactly that, of course - never mind that processes rarely consist of the euphoric high point only, involving as they invariably do a run-up that requires patience and stamina, that harbours the option of being misjudged and ending up a martyr, and without which victory and being in the right wouldn't be quite as sweet. Now that I've completed this introduction, I can finally get 'round to wondering in all conscience what possessed the Mondrian Foundation when it recently decided to throw a colleague of mine whose gallery has in fact been hanging in there for as many as 30 years out of the "Kunstkoopregeling" (the national art buying scheme, under which interest-free loans are extended to private individuals to encourage them to buy works of art, the Mondrian Foundation being charged with the implementation of the scheme). Although the gallery in question cannot be accused of ever having been at the forefront of innovation, it certainly doesn't deserve being branded a purveyor of the sort of art one might find on the walls of a pancake restaurant either (fond as my daughter and I are of pancakes). What also doesn't matter one jot, whit or tittle is my appreciation of this particular fellow gallery holder of mine (the crux of applying principles being that one should distance oneself from one's subjective preferences) or whether or not I find him likeable - on the contrary: the more I like him, the less convincing whatever it is I have to say about the matter. All of which leaves me with the stunning conclusion that a foundation having been charged with the distribution of government funds having been entrusted to it among culturally committed citizens is evidently in a position when acquitting itself of its duties to apply standards that have painfully little to do with society as such. I was going to say "formulate and apply", but the formulation bit remains a pipedream in this neck of the woods even now that the Netherlands Art Council has been abolished. Put differently, I wonder in despair, just like Ms Montijn, how it can be that I am the only one publicly to vent my spleen on the matter. The Mondrian Foundation people probably have a different system of keeping score of their merits, but all the same they have involuntarily contributed to the devaluation of the word "colleague". Come on, boys and girls from the art gallery world, which of the two do you expect to be boasting about once you've reached your dotage and have been carted off to your sheltered housing unit: disgracefully keeping mum, or brazenly screaming your head off? |